Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/51

Rh Bay. The seal of Plymouth Colony, with the date 1620, presents on the quarterings of the shield four naked Indians, bowed on one knee, with forest trees around them. The seal is without a legend, but the savages each hold up what seems to be a blazing or a flaming heart, in petition or offering. We are without contemporary information as to the origin of this seal, the date of its adoption, or the intent of its device. But the noteworthy point for us is, that the seal, whatever it was meant to signify, was the invention of the white man, not in any sense an expression of the desire of the savages, or a solicitation from them for the white man's coming here.

Even more to the point are the device and legend on the seal of the Bay Colony. That was prepared and adopted in England, and sent over here, in silver, in 1629, with the first settlers. It represents a stalwart, muscular savage, naked, save as a few forest leaves shade him, standing among his pine-trees, an arrow in his right hand, a bow in the left, and on a scroll is inscribed, as coming from his lips, the Macedonian cry to the Apostles, — “Come over and help us!” It was an ingenious device of our fathers thus to represent the natives of the soil, in their forlorn state of bodily and spiritual nakedness and heathenism, plaintively appealing to the white man to come to their deliverance. The specimen Indian on the seal, well fed and muscular, does not look as if he needed any help, except in the matter of apparel; in that, indeed, his need is urgent. So it is pleasant to read that the first Indian whom the Plymouth Pilgrims met, — Samoset, — being in the costume of Nature, received from them the following articles of clothing, so far as they would go towards making up a respectable wardrobe: “A hat, a pair of stockings and shoes, a shirt, and a piece of cloth to tie about his waist.”

If any of the native stock here in later years, when their race was all wasting away from our coast, had the skill to interpret the devices on the colony seals, they must have